No Left Turns

Mother's Day, New York Times Style

Sane people are best advised to simply ignore the fever swamp of liberalism which is the New York Time's editorial page. But occasionally it's interesting to gain a glimpse into the views of extremists. The Time's celebrates the sanctity of Mother's Day with Stephanie Coontz's revisionist essay, "When We Hated Mom" and Nicholas Kristof's appeal for greater funding for abortion and contraception to prevent motherhood.

Coontz - who unsurprisingly began her career as a leader of the Young Socialist Alliance - continues her quest to denigrate traditional womanhood and motherhood as the only remaining avenue by which to defend the legacy of modern feminism. The truth, of course, is that feminism began as a noble cause and succeeded in accomplishing most of its goals. At the end of the game, winners usually take a victory lap and move on. But the radicals can't let go - they create new, absurd goals and rely on the noble legacy of their history to coerce sympathy until at last they have so corrupted their cause as to have divorced it from all previous accomplishments. Thus, the rise and fall of American feminism - and its current shameful treatment of women and mothers. Coontz credits feminism with allowing women to choose "meaningful work" over motherhood.

Kristof provides less philosophy with which to argue. He sums up his Planned Parenthood appeal essay by criticizing Republicans for voting to fund sterilization for wild horses but not for women. I'm sure he didn't really mean to compare women to horses, but his inability to recognize a distinction between policies for animal breeding and human beings is dismaying.

So, motherhood was never that great and we should observe a day devoted to mothers by celebrating means by which to prevent and terminate pregnancies. That's the left's celebration of motherhood. Intersting, at least.

He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men.

If voluntary, then what exactly is your charge and concern? That by encouraging it the government would in reality be mandating it? Or that those affected would not "know better" and be coerced into something?

All one has to do is look to liberal's favorite mother of all time Margaret Sanger. Sanger supported negative eugenics, admitted to contributing to the death of one of her children, attended KKK meetings promoting her negative eugenics and helped opened the doors for people like Kermt Gosnell to operate human slaughterhouses.

Don: The strongest rational argument against the proposal is that sterilization is against the natural law. Nothing especially new for our federal goverment to propose a program or positive law that opposes natural law, but still worth standing up for.

Don: Voluntary or involuntary, incentivized by government or not, it's still contrary to natural law. To paraphrase the wise philosophy written on millions of shirts: "Ain't Mama (Nature) happy, ain't nobody happy." I wasn't responding to Craig's post. I was responding to yours which asked if there might be strong rational arguments to support the proposal (whether or not you personally agreed with them). The simple answer is: No, there aren't any truly rational arguments. I realize that position isn't supported by most Americans or by our current administration. It's still worth pointing out a timeless truth. OK, time for Austin Ruse or Mary Ann Glendon or Robbie George to take over the defense......Cheers, G

The nationalization of abortion has brought out the worst in people, as not only liberals but also libertarians either advocate or acquiese in abortion to reduce the welfare rolls. But the stench of abortion among most conservatives leads those in their ranks to make the sterilization proposal. What we ought to be doing is cutting welfare rolls and eliminatinh the incentive to have babies that everyone else must support. Get rid of the lure, not the one being lured. Every nation needs children to perpetuate itself. Marriage and family need to be valued again.

Promoting sterilization is a creepy social engineering project. It's perverse too, inasmuch as it is now atypical for occidental countries to be reproducing at replacement rates. (The affluent orient is in even worse shape on this metric).

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